The Suberogation Problem for Lei Zhong's Confucian Virtue Theory of Supererogation

A virtue-based theory of right action aims to explain deontic moral principles in terms of virtue and vice. For example, it may maintain the following account of moral obligation: It is morally obligatory for an agent A to ϕ in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous and relevantly informed person V would characteristically ϕ in C. However, this account faces the so-called supererogation problem. A supererogatory action is an action that is morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory. Suppose John risks his own life to save a stranger, which is supererogatory rather than obligatory. However, a fully virtuous..

Lucky Achievement: Virtue Epistemology on the Value of Knowledge

Virtue epistemology argues that knowledge is more valuable than Gettierized belief because knowledge is an achievement, but Gettierized belief is not. The key premise in the achievement argument is that achievement is apt (successful because competent) and Gettierized belief is inapt (successful because lucky). I first argue that the intuition behind the achievement argument is based wrongly on the fact that ‘being successful because lucky’ implicates ‘being not competent enough’. I then offer an argument from moral luck to argue that virtue epistemologists should maintain that knowledge is no more valuable than Gettierized belief

The Normativity of Doxastic Correctness

It is widely maintained that doxastic norms that govern how people should believe can be explained by the truism that belief is governed by the correctness norm: believing p is correct if and only if p. This approach fails because it confuses two kinds of correctness norm: (1) It is correct for S to believe p if and only p; and (2) believing p is correct qua belief if and only if p. Only can (2) be said to be a truism about belief, but it cannot ground doxastic norms

Private Provision of Public Goods under Delegated Common Agency

This paper considers a delegated common agent who produces a public good with private information regarding his cost. We show that truthful strategies are not optimal for principals, and that the agent enjoys some rent in equilibrium. It is not always that all principals make contributions: the number of contracts with positive contributions accepted by the agent in equilibrium is non-increasing as the agent becomes less efficient.